A Tri-Valley update on banning housing
Topics: Housing
26 Oct 1999
From: Ervan Darnell
The Merc reported Monday [1] on a particular instance of the problem I
previously wrote about: "fed-up residents in three East
Bay cities are poised to approve some of the most severe growth control
measures in the country."
It provides a tidy example of some of the problems I
mentioned. Here are the primary claims as listed by the proponents
(CAPP):
Proponents say they can't keep waiting for
what they consider phantom regional approaches to deal with the housing
crunch, traffic snarls and inadequately funded
schools.
First, it's worth noting that environmental issues aren't even
mentioned. They didn't even bother with that fig leaf of an excuse
since there is nothing much environmentally sensitive in the Tri-Valley
to protect. "Saving the environment" is just a canard in
most of these arguments.
Of the three things they did mention, this proposal makes two, and
probably all three, worse. Either they don't realize that and are
fools or they do realize that and are hypocrites for trying to stop the
next guy from buying a home after they just got one (a large percentage
of people in the Tri-Valley moved there recently). Taking the
points in order:
Housing availability: They are banning housing in the interest of easing
the housing crunch. That's patent nonsense. The measures
requires every development over 20 homes to be put on the ballot.
Even if new homes are allowed it drives up the price because the builder
must cover the costs of litigation (probably) and waging a ballot
campaign. All of that money ultimately produces nothing.
Traffic: Traffic is mostly a problem on the main freeway conduits and not
the city streets. These cities have no jurisdiction over the
freeways (thankfully). New development means a new tax base to pay
for local city streets. Stopping development won't help
there. Where are city streets crowded? In suburbia where
there is "sprawl"? No. The second problem is that there
is nowhere to go but further out. For the Tri-Valley to ban
development does nothing to create more housing further in, especially
since it's often limited by law. So, instead of people getting on
the freeway at any of several entrance ramps in Livermore, they will now
all simply drive the full length of the freeway through Livermore as they
commute from further away (e.g. Tracy).
It might help in the limited sense that it will push people into housing
in the distant south instead of the distant east, but that only works
until communities in the south do the same thing. This part of the
case is a tragedy of the commons and does ultimately nothing to support
the proposal.
Even environmentalists realize this part of the argument is flawed:
Eric Parfrey, a Tracy environmentalist and
urban planner, opposes the initiatives because, he said, the voter
approval requirement will discourage in-fill development and worsen
sprawl.
Furthermore, he said, the initiatives don't attack the root cause of the
housing demand -- a Silicon Valley economy that is producing thousands of
new jobs annually. Developers will simply build the housing farther
out.
He said more than he intended by admitting that growth and new jobs are a
problem. That all too often seems to be the Green agenda, but I
digress.
Schools: typically new residents have higher incomes than existing
residents simply because housing prices are rising. Thus, there is
more money per pupil (since the new residents are in some sense forced to
subsidize the existing ones). Growth is good for schools.
This wouldn't even be an issue if schools were private (or at least
voucher funded). In the supposed interest of improving education,
the "public" school system is causing people to ban
housing. It's one government failure driving another, as surely as
each price control justifies the next.
[1]
http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/front/docs/growth25.htm
Published Monday, October 25, 1999, in the San Jose Mercury News
===============================================================
Ervan Darnell |"Term limits are not enough.
ervan@iname.com | We need jail."
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